Hacker Cinema
The Passion of Joan of Arc
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc
1928 · Film · 81 min
Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer
A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.
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17 comments on Hacker News
Thanks! Here's the full list: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 8½, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, All That Heaven Allows, Apocalypse Now, Ashes and Diamonds, A Woman Under the Influence, Barry Lyndon, Bicycle Thieves, Breathless, Casablanca, Céline and Julie Go Boating, Chinatown, Chinese Roulette, Citizen Kane, City Lights, City of Pirates, Contempt, Daisies, Damnation, Dishonored, Earth, Electra My Love, El Topo, Eraserhead, Eyes Wide Shut, Film Socialisme, Fitzcarraldo, Fuego en Castilla, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Holy Motors, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, In a Year with 13 Moons, India Song, Inland Empire, Irma Vep, Koyaanisqatsi, La Dolce Vita, La Jetée, Late Spring, L'Eau de la Seine, Le Voyage dans la Lune, Lolita, Los Olvidados, Lost Highway, Lucifer Rising, Man with a Movie Camera, Metropolis, Mirror, Mulholland Drive, Night Music, Ordet, Orpheus, Persona, Pickpocket, Playtime, Psycho, Rebecca, Rosemary's Baby, Rumble Fish, Scarface, Seven Samurai, Sherlock Jr., Singin' in the Rain, Stalker, Sunset Boulevard, Taste of Cherry, Taxi Driver, Testament of Orpheus, The 400 Blows, The Blood of a Poet, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Color of Pomegranates, The Green Ray, The Holy Mountain, The Isle, The Lady from Shanghai, The Night of the Hunter, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Seventh Seal, The Spirit of the Beehive, The Tales of Hoffmann, The Tree of Life, The Turin Horse, Time of the Gypsies, Tokyo Story, Touch of Evil, Trans-Europ-Express, Ugetsu, Un Chien Andalou, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Vampyr, Videodrome, Wavelength, Werckmeister Harmonies, Wild Strawberries, Moonlight Sonata, Stellar, The Haunted House Biased toward European art cinema, experimental work, and directors who broke conventional narrative rules.
The vast majority of CG is replicating stuff like set design or replacing a location shoot. We don’t usually call that an “effect” when it’s not done with a computer. And even then… it continues to deliver “bad matte painting” often enough that spotting such failures in the wild isn’t hard (nor was it hard with bad matte paintings!)
[edit] my point, anyway, isn’t that any given effect is better. It’s not even necessarily that the movies are better (The Passion of Joan of Arc barely had effects at all, and didn’t have synced sound, for god’s sake, an it’s incredible—of course CG-having movies can be great) but that I tend to find the overall effect of those movies better. Those “seamless” mundane CG effects shots of things like composited computer-generated rooms or streets rarely get the kind of attention a real set does, and the movies suffer for it. Nobody had to move around the space with their real body and think about it, and it usually (usually! Not every single time) shows, if not in anything wrong, exactly, then in the degree to which it’s perfectly forgettable and fails to contribute anything but filling screen space.
[edit edit] more to the point, peak practical wins at convincing effects in the Big Damn Action Moment. But only peak, and that was a tragically brief span. Point me to a CG sci-fantasy space fight that looks better and/or more like a real thing that’s happening than the battle above Endor in return of the Jedi (you’ll notice I didn’t pick the earlier two movies, as Jedi is where they really perfected it all—though even the first has some shots that are quite convincing!). Like truly if you know of one I’d love to see it. I never have. They all look plainly computer generated. I’m not saying every frame of those SFX shots in Jedi is perfect, but it looks overall more real than anything similar I’ve seen done in a computer. Like you’d think in about 40 years it’d have been surpassed multiple times, but no. They all look CG.
Or, like… put the best 50% of practical shots in Jurassic Park against the best 50% of CG-heavy dino action shots in any Jurassic Park from 3 on. They’re more convincing than any of the CG shots. (Some, from the field of all practical effects shots in the film, are not convincing! But a hell of a lot are, and not just better than the median CG effect in later JPs or something, but better than all). We struggle to touch the tippy-top peak of that craft with computer effects, still today.
Sure, no problem, never bothered by disagreement over art/entertainment. I appreciate the perspective. And sure, I’d not put many of these near the tier of, say, a Godfather or a Passion of Joan of Arc. Only a few anywhere near an Alien, for that matter.
> That’s why the snap at the end of Avengers: Infinity War was spectacle but didn’t have the emotional impact of a single deer being shot at the beginning of Bambi.
God, truth, and all the more effective a comparison for me because I happened to re-watch Bambi within the last week.
Marvel movies rarely achieve even that lesser connection, maybe a half-dozen times in the thirty-whatever movies.
The Passion of Joan of Arc [1] is one of the greatest films of all time. It also inspired a remarkable synthesis of music and film, Richard Einhorn's Voices of Light [2], that is well worth experiencing live if it is ever performed near you.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_Joan_of_Arc
[2] https://www.richardeinhorn.com/voices-of-light-1
This film already has a 2K release by Criterion (vhttps://www.criterion.com/films/228-the-passion-of-joan-of-arc), probably other publishers. It gets show in theaters in some cities at least once a year.
I think for films, the restoration/HD prints will still belong to someone, and that's what people are interested in nowadays anyway.
"The Passion of Joan of Arc directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer"
As old, silent films go, this is quite good.
In the past, this might mean a cheap DVD release. Not sure the signficance of public domain for movies these days.
Who decides what "filmic value" is? I've seen some of the older films, and I feel they hold up pretty well; The Passion of Joan of Arc (1927, #21 on this list) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, not listed here) are some of my favourite films, and personally I'd say they really do stand up well today.
Some people might also find these finds incredibly boring, and that's fine. In the end this is nothing more than "films the 1,639 people who voted liked the best". I bet everyone can name some films they feel should be on that list, or has seen films on the list that they disliked; for example I felt Citizen Kane was profoundly boring. That's okay as not everyone's movie taste is the same, just as people's tastes in music or food differ.
Years ago I watched The Childhood of a Leader in the theatre with my then-girlfriend. I thought it was pretty good. I could see her shifting in her seat and sighing heavily, and her dislike of it was palpable even in the dark without any words spoken. She hated it and would have walked out if it wasn't for me. My rating would be 8/10 or so; hers 1/10. Average rating: 4.5, which is not too far off the 54% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Anyhow, my point is: I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss people's tastes.
> The Passion of Joan of Arc (just... damn. This is a perfect movie.)
We need a new class of superlatives, that can't have their meaning diluted, for that class of masterpieces.
Anyone looking to get into silent film, I'd strongly recommend comedies (including, and perhaps especially, Chaplin and Keaton) as a good starting point. I've gotten to the point that I can truly enjoy a lot of silent dramas, but IMO the comedies are far more approachable for a modern audience. Good gateway drug.
Just off the more famous films (The Great Dictator and Modern Times and maybe City Lights for Chaplin, or The General for Keaton, say) I'd recommend The Kid for Chaplin, and Sherlock, Jr. for Keaton. And of course both made numerous short films, in addition to their features. Though the very-famous ones are all great, too—I especially love City Lights, personally.
Been meaning to check out Harold Lloyd (responsible for one of the most enduring and imitated images in Hollowood, the guy hanging on the clock on the side of a building, featured in Safety Last) but haven't made it to him yet. I bet he "reads" pretty well to a modern viewer, too.
[EDIT] Some beginner drama recommendations, for those who feel ready:
Metropolis (duh... though it's a bit on the long side, maybe skip if you can't tolerate longer movies, and it's maybe a bit belabored for modern sensibilities)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (just... damn. This is a perfect movie.)
L'Âge D'or (The Golden Age—but, uh, maybe just if you appreciate things a bit more art house)
Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon—it's short, and, if one plays with various accompanying soundtrack options, including some more modern ones, one may find it transcendently good)
M (yes Fritz Lang made this very short list twice, because fuck you this movie is amazing, this is maybe the most modern-feeling of this whole bunch)
> Jan 1, 2023 will also be a fine day for film in the public domain, with Metropolis, The Jazz Singer, and Laurel and Hardy's Battle of the Century entering the commons. Also notable: Wings, winner of the first-ever best picture Academy Award; The Lodger, Hitchcock's first thriller; and FW "Nosferatu" Mirnau's Sunrise.
Metropolis is so influential that I'd call it a must-watch for... well, basically any fan of popular media of any kind. Film, literature, graphic arts, video games, music(!). Its influence is everywhere.
Sunrise is one hell of a roller-coaster of a movie. As with anything in the silent era (especially the non-comedy films) it's a bit of an acquired taste but it's among the earliest films that I didn't just find interesting or funny, but that really got me on the edge of my seat, several times. It's got some real "yell at the screen" moments :-) I enjoyed it way more than the director's more-iconic Nosferatu. Though, for my money, it's no M or The Passion of Joan of Arc, as silent film dramas go. Still, really good, and I think a lot of critics hold it in far higher regard than I do.
Haven't seen the rest.
> On the literary front, we have Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, AA Milne's Now We Are Six, Hemingway's Men Without Women, Faulkner's Mosquitoes, Christie's The Big Four, Wharton's Twilight Sleep, Hesse's Steppenwolf (in German), Kafka's Amerika (in German), and Proust's Le Temps retrouvé (in French).
Damn, what a powerhouse year in literature. And look at that, my favorite novel (To the Lighthouse) is about to be public domain!
The Holmes news is awesome, too. Bunch of copyright troll dicks have been making doing anything with Holmes risky for years. Great that everyone can more-easily ignore them.
I meant Ordet and Babette's Feast. The Passion of Joan of Arc is a french movie, even if it is a Dreyer film.
IMO, for whatever reason, the great comedies of the silent era are a lot more approachable to a modern viewer than the great dramas. Even the lesser comedies are usually quite watchable. Of the dramas I'd recommend The Passion of Joan of Arc over anything else I've seen, for someone who hasn't watched much from that time period. It's both excellent, and easier to watch (in one sense, I mean, obviously the subject is pretty rough) than most other non-comedy silent films.
Most people here know that they are on the Internet Archive. I personally don't like their interface, and their wider movie collection [1] is mingled with a lot of other material (TV ads, speedruns and machinima?). The IA is more about creating a complete historical collection than providing an entertainment service.
All streaming services currently lack older classics. I like the idea of a dedicated "Netflix for public domain" movies.
Maybe someone would like to pick this idea up and improve it (I don't know the dev). The video quality improvement sounds like a good idea already.
It would also be good to create versions of silent movies at their original presentation speed [2] (16Hz is probably more accurate than 24Hz). Movies like "The Passion of Joan of Arc" [3] should not be watched at a comical speed.
[1] https://archive.org/details/movies
[2] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSpeedOfSilents
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4_KDf4xhU8
If we're sharing our favorites then I don't think you can go wrong with La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928).
The criterion collection version is great and watch it with Richard Einhorn's Voices of Light, especially if it's your first time.
It's one of the more high profile silent films but with good reason. If you want to try something different with friends but don't want them to fall asleep I've had good success with this film.
the valerie project[0] was a psychedelic folk band that toured the US playing screenings of "valerie and her week of wonders," a 1970 czech surrealist horror movie (highly recommended!). they were pretty awesome, especially for a one-off super obscure thing like that.
related but different: guitarist loren connors did a soundtrack for "the passion of joan of arc" (1928)[1] that I find incredibly moving. for those not familiar with connors' work, it comes from a kind of catholic guilt that makes his score and this particular film an artfully brutal pairing.
0. http://www.dragcity.com/products/the-valerie-project
1. https://vimeo.com/53953169 (excerpt)
The IBM 1400 series is pretty significant in the history of computers and the 1401 was the first of it's line. So why are there so few out there?
Simply put, the average IBM 1401 is comprised of roughly five tonnes of gold-rich salvage material that hit the market at a time when old "new" stuff was basically worthless. Yes, antique chairs and china had value then, but not obsolete technology, records, or film. This was a time before VHS, mass market home video, and the notion that old celluloid was anything besides junk. The only surviving copy of Dreyer's cut of "La passion de Jeanne d'Arc" was sitting in closet in a mental institution in Oslo. This was a tough time to be an inconveniently large hunk rich in precious metals!
Laboriously scraping the gold off of connectors etc. is obviously a lot of work. That's not how the pro's did things. We're talking chemical baths, electroplating, you name it. I once had a prof who moonlighted as a computer salvager in the 80's. He admitted to being the final death of many large mainframes, including 1401's, that he dearly wished he could have saved if he'd known then what he knows now (or did at the time I took his course)!
The worthless becomes the precious. Maybe people with hoarding disorders are saner than we think! (Looking around me, I might have a touch of that myself...)
One thing I was hoping this series would shed light on was an oddity in demographic voting patterns with the ratings system.
From my own (anecdotal) observation, there's a class of films where the 'Females 45+' rating is a big outlier in the voting, with a large proportion of '1' votes. it's as if there's a gang of a few hundred users consistently downvoting films who are classed by IMDB as being part of that demographic - I don't know if it's a default setting that some bots or trolls have used or if there really are a bunch of cinephobic old women out there just watching and hating on films, but it did spark my curiosity as to what the pattern was. It doesn't happen in every film, and it's rare that you see any other demographic sticking out like this.
The best examples are critically acclaimed films with low voter counts. More popular, or less well-received films tend to have a lot of negative noise to begin with, so the effect is less noticeable, if it's there at all.
Here's some examples:
Army of Shadows : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064040/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
Spartacus : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054331/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
Ikiru : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044741/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
Passion of Joan of Arc : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019254/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
Breathless : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053472/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
Z : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065234/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
Barry Lyndon : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072684/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt